Suggestions for chat capabilities with some privacy

[JeffL]

I need to be able to discuss some issues with some folks in a chat room environment. I do NOT need to have every twerp online jumping in - I'd prefer this be private. Also - some chat rooms that I find in a simple search are not accessible through my company's irritating firewall. One that did seem perfect (chatzy?) had so much lag between when we'd send a sentence to when the next person got it we ended up going back to email.

Suggestions?

Thanks. (just realized how this sounds - no this is not some sleazy on-line affair, unfortunately. ;) )

[Bullhajj]

I need to be able to discuss some issues with some folks in a chat room environment. I do NOT need to have every twerp online jumping in - I'd prefer this be private. Also - some chat rooms that I find in a simple search are not accessible through my company's irritating firewall. One that did seem perfect (chatzy?) had so much lag between when we'd send a sentence to when the next person got it we ended up going back to email.

Suggestions?

Thanks. (just realized how this sounds - no this is not some sleazy on-line affair, unfortunately. ;) )

You can't just use one of the IM clients, like MSN messenger or ICQ? All of those things have Chat, along with the instant message stuff. I guess it depends on how locked down the firewall is. Do they let IM through?

[Angie Gallant]

You can find a small IRC network, register your channel and set it to secret and invite only. I guess it depends on how likely you think it is that you can get the other people to take the 5 minutes to understand how IRC works.

[XPav]

Try Trillian -- it has SecureIM capabilities which probably prevent most l33t kiddies from snooping your messages.

Of course, real security people hold their nose up at it.

[JeffL]

Ah crap - our damn firewall gurus will not allow the use of IM clients and will not provide the firewall info I need to configure it. Ugh.

[XPav]

If you've got Web Access, could you use the Web-based version of ICQ?

[JeffL]

Ah - wasn't aware of this, I'll check it out. Thanks

[bago]

I remember back in the days when there were chat rooms that consisted of form posts to update a table in the webpage. Heh.